Photo by Andrew Lang/Nats.Talk

If we told you that the Washington Nationals had a 22-13 record (.629 win %) on the road and a 12-20 record (.375 win %) at home, you probably wouldn’t believe it. But that is accurate. The difference between home/road is eight more losses at home to equal their road success.

Then you dig down to try to find some reasons for the difference in success and failure, and you are shocked to find out that the offense is scoring almost identical runs per game on offense at home and on the road. So clearly, the problem is pitching and defense.

An important point to make that the home/road splits is more than just the pitching, it is the defense too. The team is giving up 1.7 more runs at home with an ERA difference of 1.3. That means that 0.4 more unearned runs are given up at home also. That is 13 more free runs given up at home.

If we told you that the only bulk pitcher who has better home splits is Cade Cavalli, that would probably blow your mind. But the other factor is that for the bulk pitchers, the sample sizes are small because they have only pitched five or six games at home. One bad outing will skew the numbers. But here is a chart we prepared:

The good news is that the offense isn’t the problem between home and road. The coaches and front office people have some work to do. Why is Miles Mikolas 3.81 runs worse at home? And why do the infielders make more errors at home?

Last night’s win has put the Nats squarely in the Wild Card hunt. It allows you to dream that if the team can figure out how to beat the Marlins consistently (1-5 record), a few finer points in pitching, and possibly make some pitching improvements, this team really could contend. The Nats are just 1.0 game out in true contention.